I had done a lot of CW contesting in the past, but have gotten rusty over the past 5 or 6 years. I decided to take the plunge with the ARRL 160 CW contest this weekend using my 6500 with 100 Watts and an Offset Fed 160 Meter dipole up 38 ft.

All I can say is WOW! The filtering and smooth QSK have made it a joy! I could separate stations that I could never hear before with my TS-850, and in 6 less hours I only had time to make three trips through the band, working a large percentage of the stations I could hear. In 6 hours, I worked 51 Sections and 2 or 3 DX stations. Not a "big dog" but not bad for this casual operator in southern Indiana..

What would make it better?

1) A line in one of the Dedicated Serial Ports to let me send CW from my N3FJP contest logging program would have saved my fingers...

2) The much-anticipated January improvements in DSP - NR especially - would have been helpful.

3) Tunable Audio Peak Filter.

All in all, this has been a good re-entry into the CW contesting world.

Once I got some things dialed in, it really started getting to be fun. Throughout the contest, I changed the CW pitch so it wouldn't assault my ears quite so much. Then with combinations of AGC-T constants, NR and RX EQ adjustments, I was able to pull out some weak ones!

When (If?) they implement an audio peaking filter, it will add some real utility, as well as the expected DSP/NR improvements slated for this January. I am anxiously awaiting January!